


I Wouldn't Like Me

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Explicit Language, M/M, Soulmates, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 05:36:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2839931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some people are just better off on their own. But sometimes there are circumstances, like people who literally crash-land into your life and generally ruin everything. Sometimes those circumstances lead to others. Like the person who you tried your absolute best to hate turning out to be one of the most decent human beings you've ever met. </p><p>Or he would be. If he was human.</p><p>Written for the jm!exchange on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Wouldn't Like Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [itsmeagain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsmeagain/gifts).



For most people, opportunity knocked just once.

Jean had never considered himself to be most people, but if someone had tried to tell him that his opportunity would come in the form of another man falling through his ceiling at two in the morning, he would have laughed in their face.

He certainly wasn’t laughing now.

Ears ringing from the crash and eyes stinging from the dust and debris in the air, Jean stiffly peered over the edge of his bed, praying it had been a meteor, or better yet a very vivid hallucination. The pile of drywall, insulation, snow, and roof shingles coughed once and then a body popped up; his hair was wild and littered with house bits and there were scrapes all over his skin.

He looked up at Jean with a wide grin. Like he was some manic patron saint of household destruction, come to bless him with his chaotic presence.

“Hi there.”

“What the fuck,” Jean croaked out.

“Yeah, sorry about this.” A deafening roar rang out, like the sound effects from Jurassic Park only amped up a lot more loud—and a lot more disturbingly real. Above the sound of his heart hammering, Jean swore he could hear the pounding of _feet_ shaking the house. The man surged to his feet, looking a lot more serious despite his smile. “This’ll make a lot more sense later, I promise.”

And before Jean could do anything, think anything, his lips were on his, tasting like plaster and heat and _oh god this can’t be real._ The air tightened around him like a shell, his stomach twisted, and the last thing Jean saw before he fell was a pair of opalescent eyes shining bright in the growing dark.

As far as hallucinations went, he figured it couldn’t get much worse.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The problem about falling was that everything eventually lands. And landing? Landing hurt.

Jean’s eyes felt gritty and his head was pounding in a way that threatened to make him expel the meager contents of his stomach, so he stayed very still and kept his eyes shut, hoping that it would go away. Hoping that the hallucination had gone away, that it had simply been brought on by a bad burrito and gave him the grounds for a lawsuit against Chipotle.

Voices started emerging from the buzzing, horrible fog around him, killing the sickly daydream of paying off his student loans in its tracks.

“You don’t suppose it did any damage to him, do you?” a fretful and vaguely familiar voice said.

“Nothing permanent, I wouldn’t think!” The respondent sounded far too cheerful and far too loud. Jean protested the volume by trying to snap at them, but only succeeded in making a slightly pathetic whine. “See, pretty boy’s already woken up. No harm done! Well, he might have a teeny bit of a concussion, but like I said, nothing permanent and nothing we can’t fix. Don’t worry your pretty little head, Marco.”

“Do you have to call anything breathing in your vicinity pretty, four-eyes?”

“Don’t worry, Levi, I still think you’re still the prettiest,” they laughed. Jean felt cold fingers brush across his forehead and the pain seemed to ease off. He cracked open one eye, which was something he immediately regretted as he found himself far too close to a strange person hovering over him with slightly manic eyes behind the thick panes of their glasses.

If he could have moved without vomiting, he would have. But he couldn’t. So.

“Aw, hey there, buddy!” they chirped, their face still inches away from his. “How’s it going?

“Who the fuck,” he managed to grate out. “What the fuck.”

They leaned away, apparently satisfied with that, or just frightened away by the smell of his breath. Jean didn’t want to place any bets on which of those it was.

“Yep, he’s fine. But let this be a lesson to you, Marco, don’t ever take a human on a jump without knocking them out first. Not all of them are so resilient.”

“I sort of lost the serum in the chase. It was one of the fastest Titans I’ve ever had to deal with.” Jean blinked a few times before reaching up to shakily scrub some of the desert sand from his eyeballs. When he opened his eyes again, he could focus marginally better and saw the man who had fallen through his ceiling sitting beside him, looking a combination of harried and bashful.

“Could’ve just done it the old-fashioned way.” That was the cold voice from a few moments ago. Levi, had the glasses person called him? Jean squinted across the room and another figure became clear. “One good smack to the head, pretty boy would’ve been down and we could have avoided this bullshit.”

The next person to call Jean pretty was getting vomit on their shoes. No exceptions. He was now more aware of his surroundings, the cool hardness of the floor beneath him, the softer plushness beneath his head, the oddly dim ambient lighting. The room was eerily blank, four walls with identical doors set in each.

“Jean.”

It was not the gentle touch of a hand on his arm that drew his attention back to the ceiling man, but the familiar way he called his name. It was more than a little unnerving, especially paired with the soft smile on his face.

“How do you know my name?”

He ignored him. “I’m Marco, Marco Bodt. Do you remember what happened?” Jean glared up at him and shoved his hand away, gingerly sitting up on his own despite the way it made his head spin sickeningly. As if he could forget any of that.

“Where am I?” He directed his question to the person in glasses. They tilted their head slightly, and Jean could swear they had too many teeth, too many too _sharp_ teeth in their mouth when they grinned.

“Don’t worry, it’s a safe place. The Titans can’t find you here. I’m Hanji, by the way, and grumpy face over there is Levi. Major and Corporal, respectively.”

“What the _fuck_ are you talking about?” He could feel the onset of panic starting in his body, the tremble in his hands, the shortness of his breath.

“Take it easy, Jean,” Marco said reasonably and the brush of his fingers against the bare skin of his arm pushed him into immediate action. He was still in his pajamas, his goofy Christmas pajamas with reindeer and snowflakes.

“Do not _touch me._ ” He tried to stand but didn’t accomplish much other than sliding awkwardly a few feet away from his apparent abductors. “What am I doing here? What’s going on?”

Marco and Hanji shared a look, before Hanji stood with a nod and ushered their short friend from the room through one of the blank automatic doors that slid open with a slight hiss of displaced air. Corporal Levi. Corporal of fucking what?

“I’ll try to keep this brief,” Marco was saying as the door closed behind them, watching him avidly. “I know it will be hard to take in, but please try to believe me when I say everything I’m about to tell you is the absolute truth.”

Jean had no response. His head hurt. His throat ached. He was utterly terrified in a very visceral way he had never been before. Was any of this real?

He remembered the fall.

“Does the name Eren Jaeger mean anything to you?”

He felt like he was still falling, down, down. Jean stared back at the other man, dimly aware of his own rapid heartbeat screaming at him to calm down. He remembered the fall, he was living inside the fall, he was the fall. But he hadn’t fallen alone.

Eren Jaeger was his friend. Had been. Before he’d vanished without a word two weeks ago, no trace, no sign, no letter, no nothing. Just a sterile apartment without the faintest touch of memory, and an endless trail of people who simply said ‘Eren who?’ when he tried to ask. No amount of trudging through the early snowfall to knock on doors got him anywhere.

“What do you know about Eren? What’s he got to do with any of this?” he managed to ask shakily. _And what is it that you know about me._

“Jean?” Marco stood and held out a hand. “Why don’t we get you some water and we can talk about this.”

Reasonable. Clinical. Logical.

Jean took his hand and tried not to flinch at the shock that curled through his fingers.

 

 

 

 

They were in another room, Jean supposed, even though it looked near the same except for two blank chairs at a blank table and a lukewarm glass of water sat before him. He had downed the first like nothing, listening to this Marco talk steadily.

“You’re telling me Eren isn’t human?”

“He’s similar, but no. Neither am I, and neither are Hanji or Levi.”

“Then what the fucking hell are you?”

Marco tilted his head slightly and didn’t respond. “Eren was posted to your city to watch over things. To track down the Titans and the other malignant spirits that had gotten loose. Other than his strength, he has the gift of opening the human mind to friendship. Did you ever wonder how you became friends with him so quickly?”

They had just gotten on. He hadn’t questioned it at the time. “So he manipulated me.”

“No, of course not. He just…persuaded the seed of friendship that would have eventually formed to grow significantly faster. As I was saying, he was posted as a protector, but somehow, you got overexposed to his soul leakage and it…attached to you. It’s something that happens every so often, if you’re in close contact with a human. It’s natural to leave little pieces of your soul behind, it all regenerates eventually, but what Eren left with you was more than should have been left.”

It sounded a lot like Marco trying to blame Jean’s current predicament on a case of bad spiritual plumbing, which was shitty for a number of reasons.

“I don’t understand,” Jean said, repeating himself yet again. Marco sighed.

“There’s only so much I know how to explain, Jean. I’m sorry.”

“Just…” Jean waved him on, slumping forward onto the table. “Just keep going, I guess.”

“My people and your people have the same soul matter, but humans don’t actively project theirs, and therefore don’t normally draw the attention of Titans—”

Titans, which he had explained as massive constructs of pieces of souls gone wrong, all mashed together to create something huge and terrifying and hungry. It was the type of nightmare a child would build. A frightened child, huddling beneath the bed and staring out at the endless dark.

“—but for us, our soul draws them in. So the pieces of Eren’s soul that were clinging to you were attracting the Titans to your city. To you. They would have killed you tonight had I not intervened.”

The deafening roar. The footsteps.

“How can people not know about them? How can they not hear?”

“You never would have, if not for Eren. And they never would have been able to touch you. It was our fault you were being hunted, Jean, and we’re trying our best to fix that by bringing you here. Given time, his soul will disengage from you, and it will be safe for you to return home.”

For what felt like several minutes, Jean stared through the water glass at the utter barrenness of the room, letting his anger and confusion simmer beneath his skin. When he felt it had come to a boil he could no longer contain, he straightened in his chair.

“You really expect me to believe any of this shit? To just _go along_ with this because you say so?”

The man’s face—Marco’s face never lost his smile but there was a flatness in his gaze that cooled Jean’s temper, marginally. For an instant, he recalled the fall. He recalled the flash of feral iridescence in place of soothing brown irises and shivered.

“Jean,” he said quietly, “I’m afraid you don’t have much of a choice.”

Jean was on his feet before he could think, anger and a healthy dose of fear shaking him.

“Fuck you,” he hissed out, unable to articulate what he really wanted to say. That he didn’t believe in monsters, or magic, or fate. He did believe in free will and to _hell_ with their plan to steal that from him, no matter how temporarily. At least that ridiculous smile had slipped from Marco’s lips. He gazed up at Jean, almost placid but for the vein jumping in his jaw.

“I understand this must be difficult—”

“Understand? _You understand?_ No, sit the fuck back down,” he spat out when the other man made to rise, taking a defensive step back. “If you and your creepy friends think you can just—just whisk me off to where-the-fuck-ever, and then demand I go along with it quietly—”

“No one’s making demands, Jean.”

“Well, you sure as hell didn’t ask my goddamned permission! So what exactly would call all this?” He made a wild gesture at the room with its blank walls and creepy, identical doors.

“Look, it’s for just under a month. 25 days. After that you’re free to return to the life you know and forget that this ever happened.”

“And in the meantime I get to be a prisoner,” Jean spat out, “on account of your people screwing up. On account of Eren fucking Jeager.”

Marco exhaled slowly, scrubbing a hand through his dark hair. It had been neat, earlier, but not so much now. “You’re only a prisoner if you insist on being treated like one. I’d like for your stay here to be as comfortable as possible. And with your cooperation, I dare say it might even be pleasant.”

“Somehow I can’t help thinking that you’re full of shit.”

“Yes, well, we all are, so let’s not make a big thing out of it.”

Jean stared at him for a long moment.

“Did you just…”

He at least at the decency to blush a little, gaze flitting away briefly. “I’m not wrong.”

“You made a shit joke.”

Marco winced. “If you knew my commanding officer, you’d—never mind. Could we maybe pretend that didn’t happen?”

“A shit joke. A really bad one, too.” Jean could almost forget about how pissed he was at the absurdity of it. He let out an exasperated sigh, scratching idly at his nose. As much as he didn’t want it to be, the situation kept staying real. He still hadn’t woken up from whatever hellish dreamworld this was. All that was left for him to do was survive.

“25 days? No more than that?”

“No more than that,” he hastened to assure him, brown eyes wide and a little hopeful, and the beginnings of a new smile on his face, dimpling his freckled cheeks. “I swear. By my blood and my breath, I swear after that you will be free.”

Jean swallowed hard, startled by the intensity and sudden formality of his words.

“Y-yeah, okay. Don’t need to go and make it weird,” he muttered. “Where the hell is Eren, anyway?”

Marco shook his head. “Elsewhere.”

Okay. Even more questions, fewer and fewer real answers.

 

 

**Day One**

Jean had ben ushered away to a small, blank room with four walls, a desk, and a bed. There was an attached bathroom with four walls, a toilet, sink, and shower. He spent a long time staring at himself in the mirror, the dark bags beneath his amber eyes, the faint dusting of stubble at his jaw that would never grow longer than just that. He was still in his pajamas. Reindeer and snowflakes.

He didn’t see any bits of someone else’s spirit clinging to him no matter how hard he squinted. It still made his skin crawl, because maybe he wasn’t positive he believed any of what was happening to him, but he also wasn’t positive that he could afford to _not_ believe.

He was left in silence. They had told him he would be, but that didn’t make it better. Well, Hanji had told him. Marco had disappeared to elsewhere, maybe the same Elsewhere that Eren was in, and left him in the dubiously capable hands of one Hanji Zoe. Levi trailed after her like a brooding, disapproving ghost, arms folded and eyes sharp. They had chattered to him about decontamination, about safety precautions. About the ten days he would spend alone, in the quiet, blank room to purge the larger pieces clinging to him. They assured him that there was a small collection of books in the desk to occupy him. They talked about their power. A type of healing, apparently. Jean was too numb to pay too much attention to them.

When Hanji and Levi left, he fell upon the bed and did not remember sleeping.

 

 

**Day Two**

More silence. There was nothing to do but sleep.

When he had woken up there was a meal waiting on the tiny desk and a pile of clothes next to it. Jean ate but it was tasteless, and he hadn’t felt the hunger anyway. He changed slowly. The fabric looked normal, but it felt strange against his skin, too light or too soft or just…not his. They were plain, dark colors. Eren had worn something similar, now that he thought about it.

He tried reading the books he found in the desk, but the words didn’t make any sense to him. Battle tactics. An encyclopedia of monsters, a smaller one especially for the Titans. Jean didn’t have the desire to learn anything more about those things than he needed to.

When he tried to leave the door wasn’t locked but there were no more doors to be found. Jean came back to his room just to escape the sheer emptiness.

 

 

**Day Three**

Jean tried talking to himself when it became clear that Hanji hadn’t been kidding about no one coming to see him during his ten days of cleansing, but the sound rang wrong and his voice was wrong, and it was all just _wrong._

 

**Day Four**

Silence. Angry, frustrated silence.

 

 

**Day Five**

Fuck Eren Jaeger and his stupid, leaking soul.

Fuck Marco Bodt and his promises about helping him.

Jean screamed at the door, but either no one could hear him or no one cared.

 

 

**Day Six**

He tried to use up all the hot water in the shower, but the hot water never seemed to end.

Jean had a breakdown in the tiny utilitarian bathroom.

 

 

**Day Seven**

Jean read the books.

 

 

**Day Eight**

Jean read the books again, wishing for once he had something to take notes with. His professors would laugh if they could see him now.

 

 

**Day Nine**

Jean read the books aloud, just for something to do, and his voice didn’t sound quite as wrong as it did before, so he kept at it until he fell asleep huddled beneath the blankets in a room that still didn’t feel like his.

 

 

**Day Ten**

So accustomed to silence, Jean got an unnecessary rush of adrenaline from the panic when someone walked through the door at the end of the day. After the fear came gratitude, and Jean had to restrain himself from throwing himself on Marco, Marco, beautiful Marco, who smiled like the dawn breaking and didn’t laugh at his dumbfounded expression as he led him at last from the cursed room.

He didn’t feel any cleaner—Marco assured him he was—but he was no longer locked in a boring-ass box.

Small favors.

 

 

**Day Eleven**

He still hated Marco, he reasoned, watching the man across the room, who either did not feel his gaze or was ignoring it. Just less, maybe. More realistically, he was just feeling comradery with any living thing that stayed in his vicinity for longer than a minute after those brutal ten days of solitude.

Funny, that Jean had never figured himself for a people person before. Yet when Marco had walked through that door, he had felt…something.

It scared him. And Jean hated feeling scared.

He rolled back over to face the wall, listening to the faint sound of Marco humming.

“So am I locked in here too?”

“Of course not, Jean,” Marco replied immediately. “You’re free to leave my room. In fact, you’re free to sleep elsewhere, but I thought you might prefer to have the company. I know that I do.”

“Were you ever...like I was?”

“Yes. A few times, when I was younger. Never gets easier.”

If he wasn’t human, did he not age? How old was he? Outwardly, Marco didn’t look much older than he was, early twenties, mid-twenties tops. Not that it should matter. Jean closed his eyes. “Sucks,” he muttered to the wall. The other man made a noise of agreement in his throat. The soft sound of the chair scraping back from the desk signaled him standing.

“I’m going out to get some dinner, would you like to come along?”

He snorted, both at the question and the polite tone. “Dunno, think I better check my social calendar first. I’ve been pretty booked lately, what with all the time I’ve had to spend with myself. Who knows, maybe I have another hot date with myself scheduled for tonight.”

Marco laughed. The sound was genuine amusement, bright and warm, and it made his stomach flip in a not-so-unpleasant way.

“If you prefer, I can bring you back something for you and your, uh, date.”

“Nah.” Jean rolled to his feet, rubbing a cursory hand through his hair. “Let’s bounce.”

They talked over dinner, which was stew and potatoes that didn’t lack taste like before, and Jean found himself more and more enthralled by the man across from him. The way he talked with his hands, the slightly crooked line of his nose, the way he offered up smiles easy as breathing. The way his lips looked soft and brought back the memory of that brief moment where they touched his.

It was easy to talk to Marco, and Jean never found it easy to talk to anyone. If it didn’t feel so good, he would be more concerned about the safety of friendships with supernatural lifeforms.

 

 

**Day Twelve**

“You never answered me, you know,” Jean said irritably, watching Marco tap things into an oddly normal looking tablet. He glanced up with his brows raised, one finger hovering over the screen. The faint blue light emanating from it lit up his dark complexion in the dim room, enhancing the line of his jaw and making him appear more like the otherworldly being he supposedly was.

“Answered you about what, Jean?”

That was a habit that was starting to get on his nerves. Jean this, Jean that. He couldn’t seem to stop saying his name.

“About where the hell this,” Jean made a broad gesture that encompassed the windowless room, “is, exactly.” The other man hummed softly and set aside the tablet, drawing up one his legs onto the chair.

“It’s difficult to explain,” he said, those long fingers now tapping idly against his thighs.

“I’ve got time,” Jean snipped at him. 25 days’ worth of it. 13, now, but still. While Marco didn’t look apologetic, he flashed a crooked smile acknowledging the comment, at least. The quiet that fell as Jean waited for his answer was almost comfortable, if not for the fact that he was locked in a room with a stranger. A stranger that insisted on treating him like a friend when Jean wanted to be anything but friends.

“It’s…like this space. Not _space_ space,” Marco added hastily, emphasizing his words with a vague formless gesture. “You know, not outer space, with stars and planets. But _a_ space. Between your world and…well, other worlds.”

“If this isn’t a world, then what—”

“Like I said, it’s a space. The gap between. Imagine the different worlds as different stages; this place is like the green room for those stages. If worlds are a place for the living, then this place is for—”

“The dead?” Jean blurted out, a cold shiver running up from his toes. Marco smiled again, softer.

“Not quite. It’s not the absence of life, just the pausing of it.”

Purgatory. A man had fallen through his ceiling and whisked him away to the fucking purgatory of worlds. Or not-worlds, whatever he was going on about. He could have at least taken him somewhere interesting. It at least explained why everything here was so hushed, like the atmosphere was holding its breath and just waiting.

“Sounds pretty shitty,” he muttered, picking at his fingernails.

“It’s nicer here than you’d think,” Marco laughed, turning back to his desk. “It’s quiet. No predators.” There was a train of thought Jean really didn’t want to pursue anytime this century, especially not after he had read all those fun facts in those books.

“How many other…y’ know. Worlds. And places like this one. How many are there?”

He shook his head. “You’d have to ask Hanji if you wanted a reliable answer, and I don’t think even they know. But a lot. More than one person could ever visit in their lifetime.”

“More than one human could, you mean.”

The words slipped past his lips before he could censor himself and while Marco’s voice remained light when he replied, the tension in his shoulders was giveaway enough of the offense he had taken. It shouldn’t have hurt him to see that. Jean was used to offending people, used to being angry and not caring what other people thought, but somehow it hurt.

“Yes, Jean,” he said quietly. “More than one human could.”

Silence fell again. Nothing about it was comfortable.

 

 

**Day Thirteen**

At breakfast they were joined by Hanji and Levi, and for the addition of just two more people, the noise increased by a significant amount. It was a nice change from the constant quiet and Marco’s perpetual calm.

“Do those two go everywhere together?” Jean asked, half-curious, half-astonished at the idea of anyone being around Hanji for more than an hour or two with their level of enthusiasm and energy. “Like seriously, that guy is always in the same room as them.”

“Most everywhere, yes, unless Levi’s out on assignment,” Marco replied distractedly, trying to comb his hair down with his fingers as they watched the older two bickering as they left the dining hall. “It’s more comfortable for them to be close since they’re sou—”

Jean waited for him to finish, but Marco had clenched his jaw shut and was staring down at his empty tray. “Since they’re…?” he prompted. He cleared his throat, continuing to gaze at the tray with unnerving intensity.

“Soulmates,” Marco said in a strained voice.

With all the other shit going on, it should have been easy to accept that something as comparatively insignificant as goddamn soulmates existed. It wasn’t. It sounded ridiculous, but the way Marco was full of tension made Jean nervous and bit back the first few snarky comments that came to mind.

“So that’s a thing, huh,” he stated blandly instead. Marco nodded tightly.

“Kind of weird, trying to imagine them getting it on,” he mused, trying to snap Marco out of his sudden mood shift. The other man sighed but finally lifted his head, a tiny frown wrinkling his forehead.

“It’s not always romantic. It’s about partnership, and fighting alongside each other, and their souls being complementary.”

“Ah.”

There wasn’t much Jean could say to that. He glanced towards the door the pair had vanished through, thinking of how they moved, not in tandem, but in harmonizing ways. Hanji, exuberant, restless, always in motion; Levi, stoic, fluid, graceful. It still sounded ridiculous, but his entire life was one big pile of ridiculous right now.

“So, uh, they’re not…together.”

“Honestly, Jean? I’ve no idea.” Marco got to his feet in a flowing movement, leaving Jean to scramble up awkwardly and nearly drop his tray in his haste to follow after him. “Plenty of people have wasted years trying to figure those two out. But they’re stronger together.”

Jean let the subject drop, but it stayed in the back of his head, a persistent little worm of a thought.

 

**Day Fourteen**

“What the hell do you guys call this place?”

“There’s no official name. But a lot of us have taken to calling it the Wall.”

Us. His people. Not human but similar. For all that Marco talked about them as if there was a whole civilization, he had only seen him, Levi, and Hanji. Granted, the dining room was about as big as his high school’s cafeteria, so there surely had to be more of them, but they certainly weren’t here. Jean proposed that question and was met with a small laugh.

“We’ve got battles to fight, Jean. We can’t always be here.”

Right. Titans. Spirits out looking to kill anything in their path. Another question occurred to him, one that none of the books had answered.

“What do you guys call yourselves?”

“ _Viatorum._ ”

“Huh?”

Marco flashed him a smile and touched his shoulder lightly in passing as he left.

“Travelers, Jean. We are Travelers.”

 

 

**Day Fifteen**

They were walking together down the hall. Jean had no idea which hall, considering everything looked exactly the same to him still, with that awful dim lighting and utter lack of decoration, unless you were counting empty space as decoration. Marco had longer legs but Jean had no problem keeping up with him at all.

Time was hard to keep track of when there were no windows and this not-world didn’t seem to understand the beautiful concept of clocks and watches. Jean asked Marco and he shrugged, saying something about linear time not serving a purpose here.

“The queen’s ability deals with manipulating time, so there’s no real point.”

“You have a queen?”

Marco curled his hands into his pockets and nodded. “Queen Historia. You won’t meet her. In any case, Hanji developed our teleportation system by taking shreds of her soul and…” he trailed off with a frown and a red flush tinted his cheeks. “Actually, I’m not sure how it works exactly, but I know Hanji developed it based off her power.”

“What about you?” Jean asked as they came to a stop in front of what he supposed was Marco’s door. He still couldn’t tell the difference between anything. He raised an eyebrow at him, not stepping through even though the door hissed open automatically. “Your, you know. Freaky superpower thing. You’ve got one too, right? Since you’re…whatever you are.”

For a moment, Jean thought he wouldn’t reply, something hard and flat in Marco’s expression. He remembered the fall. He remembered a different pair of eyes present with him in the dark.

“Difficult to explain,” he said slowly, dropping his gaze and turning his face away. In profile, the bones of his face seemed even sharper beneath his dark skin. He looked very human and Jean’s fingers itched to trace the pathway of freckles, the oddly delicate bend of his neck, just to see if he felt human, too.

“I can see souls. I can touch them.” He lifted one hand and Jean felt entranced, prey frozen in its predator’s gaze. There was a perfectly straight line of freckles the traveled the length of his hand and down his ring finger. Marco’s hand stopped bare inches from his chest and he shivered at the not-quite-touch. He tried to shift back, but there was a slight tugging sensation that kept him in place.

“Doesn’t sound so scary,” Jean managed to say hoarsely, even though he hadn’t been so afraid of Marco since the first day they had met. His heart was thrumming with the fear and a something that wanted Marco to stretch out just a little farther, so his hand pressed against him. The other man smiled, soft, sad, pained. He dropped his hand, flexing his fingers at his side.

“It’s more dangerous than you’d think. Nothing can live without a soul, Jean.”

 

 

 

 

It was late. Jean couldn’t sleep, staring at the mounded shape of Marco huddled beneath his blankets across the room. He had been thinking about all the implications of what he had said earlier, had been thinking about the strange rule of the Titans. _If they can’t see you, they can’t touch you. If they touch you, they can kill you._

“Marco,” he called out quietly, to see if he was truly asleep. A vague questioning noise emerged from the blankets.

“What do they look like?”

“What does what look like, Jean?” He yawned widely mid-sentence, voice drowsy and heavy.

“Souls.”

There was a long pause, nothing to fill the silence but the sound of their breath.

“They’re…all different.”

“What about mine?”

There was the sound of rustling as Marco flipped over. Jean couldn’t see his face in the distance and the dark, and suddenly wished there was a light so he could.

“It’s warm. Like a red smoke,” he said after a few moments. “Like you’re on fire.” The way he said the words, so reverent, so hushed, made Jean shiver and curl up tighter.

“What about you?” he asked, quieter, almost holding his breath. When no answer was immediately forthcoming, he asked again. “Marco?”

“Green, mostly.” He flipped over again. “Go to sleep, Jean.”

Something told him he had insulted Marco again or was treading on something more sensitive than it seemed. Maybe it was too personal of a question. Jean hated this, not knowing what would upset him, or knowing it would upset him but saying the same things he always did. Marco was always so careful, so gentle. He remembered the ghostly press of Marco’s lips and something inside him burned.

“Marco. Marco, hey.”

“Jean, really, I need to—”

“Thanks for telling me,” he blurted out over him and Marco quieted down. “And…sorry.”

“If anyone needs to apologize…” he trailed off with a sigh. Jean forced a small laugh.

“Let’s just call it even.”

“Fair enough.” Marco sighed and his bed creaked a little. “Goodnight, Jean.”

“Yeah.” He closed his eyes, feeling suddenly flushed with warmth. “’Night.”

 

 

 

**Day Sixteen**

“Hey. Rise and shine.”

Jean groaned and mumbled a few curses before he became fully aware of his surroundings. More specifically, of Marco’s warm weight sitting beside him, his long fingers brushing over his hair. It should have been weird, but it was comforting. Ever since the disastrous kiss that had landed him in the Wall, Marco had been mostly hands-off.

“Jean, c’mon. I brought you a surprise. Well, two surprises.”

Huffing irritably, Jean opened his eyes and glared balefully up at the man. He made a grumpy questioning noise, then saw what was in his other hand.

An honest-to-god Starbucks coffee. The smell hit him, sweet and rich, and Jean struggled into a sitting position, already reaching for it. Marco laughed, letting him take it and getting back to his feet, straightening his clothes meticulously. Jean curled his hands around the cardboard cup reverently, breathing in the fumes before taking a long drink. The taste and resulting caffeine rush was heavenly.

“It’s early,” he said in lieu of a good morning.

“Yes, but this is something you won’t want to miss. I promise.”

Jean narrowed his eyes at him, still half-cocooned in his blankets. “Stop trying to seduce me with over-priced coffee,” he growled out, the noise made much less impressive by his hoarse just-woke-up voice. Marco smiled, a new kind of spark in his eyes.

“Why, is it working?”

 _Well, shit._ Jean felt his entire face go red in an instant. He elected to ignore that question completely, ducking his head down and drinking more of the coffee. Marco laughed softly, and retreated to his side of the room to allow Jean time to wake up and change.

 

 

 

Surprise number two turned out to be a who rather than a what.

“Eren fucking Jeager.” Jean scowled at him, but was unable to draw up any significant amount of anger towards the smaller man when his face was split in a boisterous grin, verdant eyes wide and sparkling. “I should punch you. I should have unlimited license to punch your stupid face. Do you know how fucking— _inconvenient_ all this is? Just because your soul decided to get handsy with me?”

Eren laughed, sounding delighted.

“Sorry, man, I’m not the best at reining it in.”

“And you just vanished without a word. Real shit move. Thought you either had died or I had lost it completely.”

His smile faded a little and he stepped closer, gripping Jean’s forearms lightly.

“I…I am sorry. But I mean, you get why I couldn’t say anything, right?”

Jean did, which made it even more difficult to be angry. It was still frustrating. Jean just shrugged and Eren nodded, squeezing once before letting him go. “I am sorry about this happening. I really am. But does it make me an asshole if I say I’m happy to see you here?”

“Yes.” He cracked a smile though. Marco cleared his throat from behind him, pressing one of his hands the barest amount to his back.

“I have to go, Jean. But I’ll be back in a few hours if you two wanted to catch up.”

Jean nodded, grateful.

It was good to talk to Eren again, good to laugh, but it wasn’t as easy as talking to Marco. Jean kept finding himself on the edge of turning to through a comment to the other man before he remembered he wasn’t there. If Eren noticed, he was kind enough not to mention it.

Actually, he definitely just didn’t notice.

 

 

**Day Seventeen**

Eren was leaving already. He dropped by early to say his farewell. Jean stood out in the hall with him, feeling all too surreal.

“Where are you even going?” he asked, leaning back against the wall and rubbing wearily at his eyes. “I mean, you just go back and you already have to leave?”

“I only came back to see how you were getting on.” Eren scuffed the toe of his shoes against the floor.

“So where…?

“Elsewhere,” was his evasive reply. He looked up with a smile, touched his arm, and turned to leave.

“Hey, Eren,” he called out, making his friend turn quizzically. “Be…safe. Or whatever.” It was easier than saying don’t get killed, don’t get eaten. It was easier than asking if he’d ever see him again.

 

 

 

**Day Eighteen**

Marco was gone, as he so often was in the morning. When the door opened to reveal Hanji wearing a huge smile, Jean slid uncertainly to his feet.

“He’s not here,” was his automatic response to seeing her. “Marco. I don’t know where he is, but…”

“Ah, don’t worry, I know exactly where he is. Hey, since you’re not busy, wanna help me test something out?”

Jean agreed before he thought it out, only thinking of getting out of the room and seeing something new. He followed at their heels, listening to them babble on and half-trotting to catch up before doors closed in his face until they reached a large empty one that looked like the same one he had first woken up in. Levi was loitering in a corner with a book in hand, and didn’t so much as glance their way when they entered.

“So, ever since Marco jumped you here without the serum to knock you out, I’ve been thinking! Nothing all that bad happened to you, so what if we don’t have to knock humans out completely at all? Pretty cool thought, right?”

Jean was just more concerned with the fact that they apparently teleported enough humans away from their worlds that the serum was even a concern. But he kept that to himself. Hanji lifted up a small syringe, a sharp, toothy smile stretching their lips.

“So! I’ve created a weaker version that should allow for you to stay awake but not experience any of the nasty side-effects from your first jump. What d’ you say, wanna test it out with me?”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to leave her until my 25 days were up,” Jean said cautiously, not liking the manic energy emanating from them.

“You’re just teleporting to the next room over,” Levi said from his corner, as if that had been an obvious thing. Whatever. Jean didn’t take much of anything Levi said to heart since he was a grumpy old man. With a sigh, Jean reluctantly agreed.

“How’re we going to do this then?” he asked, a red flush creeping up his neck, doing his best to ignore Levi. Romantic or not, it was weird to ask someone’s soulmate about the mechanics of a kiss. “Want me to bend down or you bend up, or what.”

Hanji stared at him, plainly not following him. “What are we bending for exactly?”

“Y’know the…the kissing part? That’s how it works, right?” Jean frantically thought back to the night Marco had dragged him here. Sure, his memory was a little blurry, but he was absolutely certain they had transported away right after Marco had kissed him. It had to be the trigger. The longer that Hanji stared at him in disbelief, the more his stomach started to sink. “Oh god, that’s not how it works, is it.”

Hanji burst out into laughter as Jean hid his face in mortification. He was pretty sure he even heard a delicate snort from Levi’s lurking corner.

“Aw, pretty boy, if you wanted to kiss me you could have just asked!”

“Please don’t call me that,” he mumbled, still determined to hang onto what little dignity he could. They slugged him lightly on the arm, still laughing.

“Okay, Jean, okay. But _no_ , that’s not how it works, where did you even get that idea from?”

 _From Marco, when he kissed me and brought me here._ If kissing wasn’t the trigger…then why? Why had he done it?

 “Not important. Could we maybe just forget that this ever happened,” Jean said behind his hands, still embarrassed beyond belief. “And never tell Marco about this, ever.”

“Yeah, sure. Only ‘cause you asked nice though. Now! Ready for some science?”

Jean agreed wholeheartedly this time, if only to distract himself from the memory of Marco’s lips against his and the burning question of _why why why._

 

 

 

**Day Nineteen**

Marco didn’t come back until the next day, and Jean waited approximately two minutes before he asked the question that was currently haunting him.

“Why’d you kiss me?”

Marco went completely still, smile half-formed, and there was a vacancy that filtered through his expression that made Jean feel even more apprehensive.

“Excuse me?” he asked calmly. As if he didn’t know what Jean meant. He stepped forward into his space, glaring the scant inch up at him.

“Why did you kiss me?” he asked, louder.

“I’m not sure what you—”

“For fuck’s sake, Marco, we both know you know what I’m talking about!” Jean inhaled, trying to hold onto the shreds of his composure. When he spoke again, his voice was rough but more controlled.

“The night you brought me here. You kissed me and I thought that was part of how the transportation thing worked. You _let_ me think that. But then today—with Hanji, they had to take me somewhere and—I know it wasn’t the kiss, so why, Marco?”

Marco looked eerily calm. Almost cold. But his eyes flickered with color, just for a moment, shining with an unearthly prismatic light.

“Teleportation,” he said, smooth and casual as ever. Like he hadn’t heard a word Jean had said, like he hadn’t even been listening to his question. “Not transportation. Why were you with Hanji? I expressly asked you not to leave without—”

Jean shoved him, hard. All he did was take a small step back, what with their difference in muscle mass, but a frown creased his brow. Jean had never stopped being angry; it had just softened and Jean had let it be, had compartmentalized it, but now it bubbled up inside him uncontrollably.

“ _Answer me_ ,” he managed to force out, barely holding back the urge to punch him. “Or I swear Marco. I fucking swear, I’ll—” He didn’t know what exactly, but it would be painful.

“Okay.” Marco murmured in a rush, lifting his hands, placating. “Okay, Jean. Will you—I think you should sit down. Please.”

“I’m not sitting until I get my fucking answer!”

“I really just think you should sit first.”

“Why can’t you just—no, Marco! I’m not sitting, okay, just—how hard is it to answer one question?”

Marco exhaled through his nose, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “Why do you even want to know?”

 _Because you kissed me and you didn’t have to and I want to know why,_ why _you did it if you didn’t have to._

_Because part of me wants you to kiss me again but how the hell do I ask for that?_

“Why won’t you just tell me?” he countered.

“If…if you would just sit, Jean…”

Marco, damn it!”

“It was to protect you!” he snapped out.

Did he really think he was going to escape this conversation with that bad of an excuse? It only made Jean even angrier. “I fail to see how _kissing_ me serves of a form of protection, Marco.”

Marco’s entire being seemed to be filled with frustration and anguish. What could be so awful that he wouldn’t admit to it?

“You’re my soulmate, Jean. The kiss initiated the bond, putting you under my protection. Just…just in case we didn’t make the jump quick enough, to hide you from the Titans.”

His ears were ringing, which seemed strange. And unhealthy.

Jean stumbled towards the nearest available surface that wasn’t the floor—his bed—and sat down gracelessly.

“Soulmates,” he repeated, hoarse and disbelieving.

“Yes.”

“Like—Like Levi and…”

“Yes.”

Jean dropped his head into his hands. It couldn’t be real. It couldn’t. It just wasn’t possible and he wasn’t going to believe this. Marco wasn’t even human, not really, they weren’t even from the same _world_ and it just couldn’t be real. How could the person he was most compatible with, destined to love, be a man who essentially kidnapped him from his home and routinely hunted down monsters before they could kill him and the rest of his people?

_And yet I still want to kiss him again. Oh god, it’s real, it’s fucking real, isn’t it._

“It was to protect you, Jean.” Marco whispered but the noise was jarringly loud. “I was just trying to protect you the only way I knew for certain I could.”

“This whole time,” Jean said after a long moment of nauseating silence. “You knew this whole time. I don’t understand—I don’t even belong in this place, so how…and how did you even know that I’m…”

“I can see souls, Jean. You think I wouldn’t recognize my own soulmate?”

“I really don’t know what to think, Marco.”

“Okay. That’s…that’s fair.”

Jean took a few unsteady breaths, ears still ringing. Whether or not the soulmate thing was true, and he had a sinking suspicion that it was, if he operated on the assumption that Marco wasn’t lying, this opened up a lot more questions than before.

“When were you going to tell me? Were you going to tell me at all?”

“I was…hoping to avoid that.”

 “Wow, because that seems like a great idea. Let me know how that works out for you. _Oh wait,_ it fucking didn’t work out for you. My mistake.”

“Jean, that’s not how I meant it. You don’t understand, if you could listen—”

“Really, because I’m not sure how else I’m supposed to take that Marco. Pretty sure I understood that crystal clear.”

“ _Jean._ ”

There was a heartrending desperation in his voice. Marco sank fluidly to his knees before him, gripping tight to his arms as if he had to restrain him from trying to leave. His eyes were wide and wet, and Jean swore he could make constellations from the freckles on his dark skin, beautiful stars, beautiful Marco.

“Please listen to me. Please, I…” He took an unsteady breath, loosening his grip, fingers stroking gently until he let go completely, sitting back on his heels. “I didn’t want to tell you because it would make it that much harder to let you go, Jean. Do you have any idea how much I’ve been trying to…to keep this from you? You’re my soulmate, but you’re also human, and I can’t make you stay here. There’s nothing here for you. Hell, there’s not much here even for me.” Marco laughed weakly.

“If I didn’t tell you, then I thought it would be easier to say goodbye.”

He had almost forgotten they were going to say goodbye. He had nearly forgotten that he was going to leave this place, that he wouldn’t wake with Marco just across the room. Jean’s eyes were watering. This couldn’t be real. It was real. He could feel it down to his core that this was real and it hurt worse than anything he had ever felt. Hurt worse than he thought was possible. It hurt more to see Marco in pain, and that pissed him off.

“You should have _told me._ You could have asked me to stay. You know that, right? You should have just fucking told me, Marco.”

_Marco, my Marco, beautiful Marco._

 “I know, Jean. I know,” he whispered. Marco’s fingers brushed against him once, lightly, then he stood and vanished through the door.

 

 

**Day Twenty**

Marco didn’t come back.

 

 

 

**Day Twenty Five**

Marco didn’t come back.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Hanji made the jump back with him, Levi trailing after. They said a surprisingly heartfelt goodbye that Jean appreciated. They disappeared in a burst of light—for just one moment, Jean swore he could see color all around them, deep purple and brilliant gold, but he blinked and it was gone.

There was no hole in his ceiling when he worked up the nerve to go and look. He rubbed his arms, freezing, wondering when and how that had been fixed. If it had been broken at all, even. It had snowed more while he was away. A soft buzzing brought his attention to the nightstand. His phone. He picked it up more out of habit than any real desire to see who was texting him.

**_Sasha  
10:25 a.m._ **

**_Merry xmas Jean!!! don’t eat too many cookies!_ **

So it was Christmas. He sat down on the bed in his cold little house, phone tight between his hands and an emptiness in his chest. When his eyes started to burn with tears, he let them fall.

_If I didn’t tell you, I thought it would be easier to say goodbye._

But Marco hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye. His own soulmate couldn’t take the time to say goodbye before disappearing from his life forever.

**_Connie  
10:28 a.m_ **

**_Merry Christmas bro! I’ll give you a heads up when i’m back in town, we’ll hang out k?_ **

Yeah. Merry Christmas.

He turned his phone off and curled beneath the blankets.

 

 

 

“Hey. Rise and shine.”

Jean groaned and mumbled an irritable, “Fuck off, Marco.”

_That’s wrong. Marco’s gone._

He became suddenly aware of the very warm, very real weight resting beside him. Jean’s eyes snapped open and he nearly fell off the bed in his haste to sit up, caught by a pair of familiar hands. Marco laughed and gave him a tiny smile.

“Marco,” he breathed, and before he could remember how angry he was, Jean threw his arms around him and held on tight. His whole body thrummed with energy and warmth just from being in his presence. “Marco, Marco, oh god.” The other man drew in a shaky breath, arms encircling him just as tight. His face buried into Jean’s neck.

“Hi, Jean,” he whispered.

“You’re such an asshole,” Jean choked out.

“I know. Jean, I…I can’t stay long. But I had to see you. I had to tell you…”

“Tell me what?”

Marco pulled back, letting go only to take Jean’s face carefully between his hands, dark gaze intent on him like he was the only thing in all the worlds that mattered to him—the only thing in all the worlds that would ever matter to him.

“I had to tell you that I love you. Not just because you’re my soulmate, but because you’re _you._ And if it’s too soon for me to say that, I’m sorry. I’m all for seducing you further with coffee, with whatever you want, but I had to tell you.” He was still smiling like the great beautiful fool he was. That was all Jean needed to lean forward those few inches between them.

Their kiss this time wasn’t hurried, but just as warm as the first. No plaster, which was a bonus, and he could feel Marco tremble against him. Everything about it felt _right_. The matching wild beat of their hearts, the slightly chapped lips that yielded without hesitation when he sought to deepen the kiss, to pull him closer, closer.

“Jean,” he laughed, breathless. “Jean, I love you.”

“Yeah,” Jean murmured hoarsely, pressing another kiss to the corner of his mouth, another to his dimples. “I…I’m pretty sure I do too. Love you. But you still owe me coffee. Like, a whole boatload of coffee.”

“Anything you want, Jean. Anything at all.”

_All I really want is you._

“Jean, I have to go.”

His hands fisted in Marco’s clothes and he swallowed hard.

“But you’ll be back?”

“As soon as I can. As often as I can. I swear it.” Marco took Jean’s hand and pressed it over his heart. “I swear it.”

Jean nodded. Marco gazed at him for a long moment before leaning in to press a fierce kiss to his forehead. As he moved away, Jean could already see his eyes changing colors. Don’t go, he wanted to beg him. Or maybe, take me with you.

Marco vanished before he could say anything at all.

That was okay. Jean got the feeling there would be time enough to say all things he wanted to say.

He got the feeling that maybe in some other time, some other world, he had said the same words before.

“I love you,” he whispered to the empty room, trusting his soul to carry the words across whatever distance there was between them.


End file.
